


in infinite trust

by patrokla



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Marriage, Tenderness, is it a marriage of convenience if it's a green card marriage but with a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21778972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: The day after Theo’s eighteenth birthday, they get married at the Clark County Office of Civil Marriages.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 18
Kudos: 277





	in infinite trust

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I write absurdly tender fic to avoid finishing papers.
> 
> Title from Beach House's "PPP," an appropriate song about marriage.
> 
> Disclosure: I did some research on civil marriages, marriage in Nevada, and the green card marriage process. However, I have never actually done any of those things (yet), so there are bound to be inaccuracies. Also gay marriage wasn't legal when Theo and Boris were teenagers, so this is technically a 'modern setting' AU.

Theo and Boris get married the day after Theo’s eighteenth birthday, at the Clark County Office of Civil Marriages. They would’ve gotten married the day before, but Boris had assumed the marriage officiant dressed like Elvis at the all-night chapel would just give them a marriage license, no application or documents necessary, and Theo had been on a benzo high and utterly unconcerned with the whole process. As it turned out, you couldn’t just walk into a chapel at 1:30 am and get married legally, and so they’d gone clubbing instead, until it was light outside and the first bus of the morning came to carry them back to the empty suburbs.

It’s early afternoon when Theo’s woken up by Boris putting his cracked phone screen two inches in front of his face and saying, “Clerk’s office is open, let’s go, Potter!”

Theo forces them both into the shower first, scrubs at his abdomen with ragged fingernails until Boris pulls his hands away and uses a washcloth to wipe his skin clean. It’s progress, after a year of both of them refusing to talk about it, six months of Boris ‘dating’ Kotku, and then another year of Theo running away in the middle of things if he was anywhere near sober. Now he stays, and falls asleep in the clutch of Boris’ too-hot arms, and only feels like a imploding pile of guilt disguised as a person maybe one out of ten times that they dare to touch each other without intermediary excuses. Progress.

Still, he begins to have doubts on the walk from the bus stop to the courthouse. Boris goes to hold his hand, something new - something KT Bearman, of all fucking people, had told Boris to try, apparently. Theo had doubts about the validity of KT Bearman dispensing coked-up advice to anyone, let alone her dealer, let alone on the subject of intimacy in her dealer’s gay relationship, but Boris had taken it absolutely seriously. And so now sometimes he tried to hold Theo’s hand, and sometimes Theo let him.

He doesn’t particularly _want_ to let him at the moment. The sun is too bright, beating down on them with a forceful heat reflected off of the blacktop, the car hoods, and the gazes of all the drunken tourists and jaded locals surrounding them. He’s aware of how they must look together, him and Boris, Boris with his combat boots and Theo’s dad’s sports jacket and a safety pin in his right ear, and Theo in a dress shirt that’s too small for him and the employee-issue khakis from Staples. He’s going through another growth spurt, just an inch above Boris now when they’re both standing up straight, and none of his clothes fit. Even the khakis are a little short, and he’s absurdly discomfited by the knowledge that a patch of skin above his ankles and his beat-up tennis shoes shows every time he takes a step. 

But he’s taking those steps on the way to his own marriage, _to Boris_ , and if he can’t stomach holding hands in public now, when can he? It seems like setting a bad precedent. So he lets Boris slip bony, slightly sweaty fingers between his own, and tries to focus on the sidewalk, and the way his dad’s sports coat keeps threatening to flap off of Boris’ shoulders. 

“I don’t know why you had to wear that,” he mutters at Boris as they reach the county clerk’s office.

Boris bumps into him, purposefully, and says, “That’s because you don’t know style,” and Theo gets as far as “You’re _literally_ wearing my shirt,” before they’re interrupted by Kotku, who is standing by the door. 

“You’re late,” she drawls, and Theo has to tamp down his gut instinct to bare his teeth at her like some kind of animal. He grimace-smiles at her instead, and she returns the expression before giving Boris a more genuine smile. He gives her a one-armed hug, his left hand holding onto Theo. Theo runs his thumb over Boris’ index finger, catching on the bump of a writing callus, and tries to turn down the grimace in his expression a little as Kotku steps back. 

“You assholes ready to get married?” she asks, and Boris laughs.

“Always,” he says, and Kotku rolls her eyes, and they go inside.

—

Marriage, like most of their more expensive ventures, is Boris’ idea. Well, mostly his idea. Theo had been the one who blurted out “green card marriage” last year, in the first frantic days after Boris’ dad had fucked back off to Alaska and Boris had refused to go with him. There’d been a fight that Theo hadn’t seen, but he’d witnessed the aftermath firsthand, bursting into the living room of Xandra’s house with a clotting head wound and sprained knuckles.

He’d been all satisfaction at first, describing with great fanfare the way he’d punched his father (“that son of of a motherfuck”), broken his nose, and left him for good, for good this time. Afterwards, while Theo cleaned blood and hydrogen peroxide out of his hair, he’d begun to swear about his visa. 

They’d gotten extremely lucky with the timing, and, frankly, with Xandra’s willingness to help them wade through the endless bullshit that was extending Boris’ existing visa another year, until Theo turned eighteen. Prepping for the next round of applications - paying for the fees, hiring a fucking lawyer, etc - had shocked them both into shaping up a bit. They’d gotten their diplomas - just barely, in Boris’ case, and only slightly more than just barely in Theo’s - and Theo had gotten a soul-sucking, reality-flattening job at the first place that would hire him. (It was a Taco Bell; he lasted two months there before leveraging some of Boris’ dealer-related gossip to get a job at Staples, which was worse in a few ways, and better in a lot more). Boris, for his part, had kept as low a profile as a dealer in the desert suburbs could. And Popchik had done nothing at all, but nobody begrudged him that.

—

Theo finds it wildly depressing that there’s a line at 3:30 pm for the walk-in only civil marriage ceremonies. Boris and Kotku think it’s sensible, because they both agree that if you’re gonna blow thousands of dollars on a wedding, better to spend it on the party.

“Not that you guys are even throwing a party,” Kotku says. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be a boring married couple _before_ you even get married.”

“Theo is a cheapskate,” Boris says mournfully, and Theo elbows him in the side. The plastic chairs they’re sitting in slide a little.

“I’m being economical,” he says. “And I never said we couldn’t have a party -“

“You just don’t want to,” Boris finishes, but he doesn’t seem too bothered by it. As he likes to say, they’re more than capable of making their own fun.

“Decker? And Pav- Pavlisky?” calls a clerk, and Boris and Theo shoot up out of their chairs. Theo catches the amused look Kotku gives him out of the corner of his eye, but Boris is already going up to the counter. 

He rattles off his name for the forms, correcting the clerk’s spelling twice, before turning to Theo with wide eyes.

“Ah, shit, we didn’t think about last names!”

“Boris…Decker?” Theo tries hesitantly, and they stare at each other for a long moment before breaking into laughter.

“Sounds very bad,” Boris says, and Theo concurs.

“Sounds like shit. Let’s just -“ and he’s grateful for Boris knowing, already, that Theo isn’t about to give up his name, his mom’s name, so he doesn’t have to say it out loud in front of Kotku and half of Vegas. 

Instead, Boris turns back to the clerk and starts to pull IDs and bills for proof of residency out of his pockets.

—

There had been a moment, when Theo stood on the curb, backpack and Popchik in hand, shivering in the cold, when it looked like he would never see Boris again. The warmth of Boris’ mouth on his was fleeting, and by the time Theo had made it onto the Greyhound, he was convinced that that was the last they would have of each other. Just a kiss, and a promise to follow that Theo knew Boris would never keep.

And then, in fucking Kansas, a middle-aged man one seat ahead of Theo had looked back at the wrong time, seen Popper in his bag, and raised all hell. At the end of it, Theo was out the money for the ticket and stranded at a bus stop in Emporio with a dog and what he thought was the painting.

He’d had an option, then. Go back, to Boris, to Xandra, who they’d robbed, to his dead father, to CPS showing up at any fucking second to decide what to do with him, again. Or go back to New York. To the Barbours, maybe. To Hobie. Of course the state would show up there too, and who knows what they’d make of any of it. And who knew what Hobie or the Barbours would make of him - shaggy, sun-streaked hair, a disaster of a high school transcript, multiple drug habits, and on top of all of that, a dog.

In the end, he’d gone back to what he knew. 

—

Kotku is their witness, obviously. On paper, it looks strange. It _feels_ strange to Theo, who has never gotten over what he’s come to admit, in the privacy of his own mind, was jealousy over her and Boris. Nevermind that she and Boris had barely been together, had already broken up by the time Theo got back. He thinks maybe, a decade down the line, he might get over himself enough to be friendly, and she might get over herself enough to see any value in that. In the meantime, Theo puts up with her perpetual condescending amusement, and she puts up with his thinly-veiled hostility. 

One might assume that Boris, who’d asked her to be the witness, is blithely unaware of all of this, but of course he isn’t. They just didn’t have anyone else to ask. Xandra, for all that Theo has been willing to have her as his legal guardian for the last few years, is the last person he’d want to see him get married. On no fucking planet would that happen. And so there was really only Kotku, or Theo’s coworker Steve, from Staples, who Boris had taken an irrational dislike to, and who worked Tuesday afternoons anyway. 

And so it’s Kotku who signs her name on the form. She stands at the back of the room that they go into to get actually, legally married. Theo is grateful for this because somehow, as he steps onto the extremely hideous rug in front of the wedding officiant’s podium, and looks at Boris, he’s seized with a paralyzing fear. 

“Boris,” he says, very quietly, and he must sound the way he feels, because the officiant turns away to give them the illusion of privacy.

“Potter,” Boris says, and he looks a little hesitant when he smiles at Theo with his uneven teeth. There’s a moment when Theo thinks they’re both going to make a run for it, but if it exists, it passes in an instant. 

Instead, Boris shuffles closer to him, close enough that he can swing his foot at Theo’s shoes, almost casually, and murmur only loud enough for both of them to hear, “Is only me, Potter.” 

He eyes Theo, sliding one of his boots against Theo’s tennis shoes, and tries, “Is just me and you.” In one sense, that’s patently untrue. But in another sense, Theo knows what he means: no ghosts.

“Yeah,” he breathes out, and Boris smiles at him, less hesitant this time, and risks leaning forward a little more to bump his forehead against Theo’s for half a second. It’s just the right amount of touch to make Theo unwind a little, not too overwhelming for a public place, and he feels suddenly overwhelmed with fondness for Boris. 

The officiant finally turns around, deeming them steady enough to go through with it, and asks, “Do you acknowledge that this is a legally-binding ceremony that serves as an entrance into a marriage lawfully recognized by the state of Nevada?”

Afterwards, Theo will only barely remember saying “Yes,” and “I do” for the next few minutes. The exchange of the thin gold bands Boris had bought at a pawn shop is similarly hazy, as is the brief, blessedly perfunctory kiss they exchange in front of Kotku and the officiant. Mostly he remembers the feeling of Boris’ shoe alongside his, and the disbelieving smile Boris gives him when they leave the room, as though to say, _can you believe we’ve gotten away with it?_

They file a few more forms, and step back out into the sun. Kotku turns down Boris’ offer for dinner, wishes Theo an uncharacteristically sincere “good luck,” and then they’re on their own. 

It’s still a few hours from sunset, but the city is beginning to hum with the promise of nightlife, servers and dancers heading to clubs and hungover visitors emerging from hotel rooms in search of pre-debauchery meals. They could go out, if they wanted. 

“Is it okay if we just go home?” Theo says, on the sidewalk outside of the clerk’s office.

“Of course, Potter,” Boris says. “You have opening shift tomorrow, yes? We go home, eat, drink, and -“

“Yes, okay,” Theo says hastily, heading off the sentence before Boris can detail any other potential activities. “Sounds good.”

“Good,” Boris says, unreasonably satisfied with the very little Theo can give him. 

They begin to walk towards the bus stop, hands occasionally brushing together. Rings on their fingers, something in common among all the visible differences between them. Theo begins to run through the forms they need for Boris’ green card application: permanent visa application, application to work, medical records, affidavits of support, birth certificate, and so on. They’re on the bus by the time he finishes the list, and Boris sighs as he sits down in a seat in the back row. 

“It’s fine, I’ll print everything at work,” Theo says, and Boris laughs.

“Not that. Just…” He trails off, looking at Theo.

“So much more to go, all for me. Lot of trouble.”

And, well, Theo can’t disagree with that. It’s been trouble, and it’ll be more trouble still. Just thinking about potential home visits makes him wish he had a Xanax.

Still, he’d do a lot more, if it’d keep him from losing Boris. 

“Worth it,” he says firmly. 

Boris smiles at that, a soft, private thing, just for Theo. He shifts, slumping down a little in his seat, and pressing his shoulder against Theo’s. 

In the quiet space at the back of the bus, Theo takes his hand.


End file.
